More From NBC

PRESS Pass: Rich Lowry

The conservative editor of the National Review, Rich Lowry, wonders whether the country’s national security apparatus has gone too far in the name of protecting the homeland.

“The closer we were to 9/11, the more understanding people would be," Lowry said. "But, when something so massive with so many implications goes on for so long, then you got to wonder: have we gone too far? Does this need to be tightened up? And, certainly, at the very least, we need to have a debate about it.”

Upset about the leak, Lowry thinks the issue does need to be discussed in public. He thinks a better approach would have been for "one of these Senators who knew about it," to have gone on to the Senate floor every day and urged the president to talk about the program with the American people.

"If someone had done that it would have gotten a lot of attention and I guarantee you the president would have relented and would have talked about it," he said. "This wasn't the right way to go about it but at least now we’re going to have the debate."

Lowry's new book, Lincoln Unbound comes at a time when the Republican Party is attempting to re-brand itself as a national party. They could take a lesson from Lincoln, Lowry argues. It is "absolutely essential to [the GOP's] future that it be a Lincolnian party about opportunity and aspiration."

He argues that the 2012 elections were a "controlled experiment" the showed what happens if the part if "too associated witht he rich and when you look down on the half of the country that isn't doing as well as the other half."

Watch the entire PRESS Pass interview with Rich Lowry above to hear about his new book Lincoln Unbound and the leadership decisions of our sixteenth president.